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Mar 30, 2015

I LOVE the design of this 3d printer made by Chad Bridgewater! It is a true piece of art! This custom combines modern technology and vintage design as he developed his 3d printer based on a frame of old post-WWII Craftsman table saw. He re-purposed this two machines for his MFA thesis and he will aslo present old press drill turned int CNC mill.

Mar 29, 2015

Aakar Brainboard v2 is a new modular open source electronic controller board from India .

Here is the summary from the Indiegogo campaign page:

Aakar means Shape in Hindi. Aakar Brainboard v2 is a modular CNC controller board based on LPC1768/69 Cortex-M3 chip. Due to its modular design it allows easier upgrades as per requirements and easy replacement if there is any broken part. It runs on open source Smoothie modular firmware and is targeted at 3D Printers, Laser cutters, CNC Mills, Pick and Place and other small or Mid-size CNC machines. Upgrade your machines for higher performance and features.

Ruiz brothers from Adafruit did a very useful review and operations manual for Autodesk Ember SLA 3d printer. They go trough many aspect of it including basic maintenance and Hall sensor troubleshooting.

Basic review of Ember:

More detailed guide, operations manual and usage tips:

Here is a very detailed guide on how to use Ember, basic maintenance and even how to repair the Hall sensor so you can align the printer:

3D Proto, creator of dual parking extruder, made an excellent video about how to install and use inductive distance sensor with Mk3 aluminum hot bed. This combination enables you to reach much better quality of ABS prints. With inductive distance sensor bed leveling you can:

Save lot of time by not having to have to mess with springs and screws on your print bed. Run the auto leveling routine before every print or just one time for each start-up of the printer.

Less issues related to non level print beds like parts coming up on one corner and nozzles jamming because the print started too close.

Inductive distance sensors are very cheap so it makes me wonder why are they not used by more 3d printers for automatic bed leveling?
If you wont to see full guide on how to install and use it with Marlin go to:

Mar 25, 2015

Copyright is one of the most important issues of our age. Do you know how to use it to protect your 3d printing work? What can be copyrighted? What can you licence on a 3d object?

Here is an excellent White Paper guide written by Michael Weinberg on how to licence elements of your 3d printed / 3d printable object. It is a must read for anyone dealing with 3d printing and design!

Here is an short overview from the document:

A Three-Step Process In order to understand what it is you are licensing, this paper proposes a three-step process:

Figure out which elements of your object or object file are eligible for copyright protection

This can be much harder in the world of physical objects than it is with exclusively digital works. Unlike with code or photographs, with physical objects you may actually have to search out what parts are and are not protected by copyright. You may also need to make a distinction between the object and the file that represents the object—something that rarely occurs in the more traditional copyright world. While this can be complicated, this paper will try to make it as intuitive and straightforward as possible.

Understand what copyright does—and does not—allow you to control

Although it sometimes can feel otherwise, a copyright that protects a work does not control every use of that work.1 Understanding what your copyright allows you to control— and what remains out of your control—is critical to thinking about how to license things. For example, you may have a copyright on a file that represents an object, but not on the object itself. In that case, you should be clear-eyed about the fact that even the most restrictive license on the file will not stop people from reproducing the object without your permission.

Choose your license

After you understand what parts of your work are protected by copyright, and what that copyright protections actually mean, it is time to think about licensing. Once you understand what you have the legal right to control, you can start deciding how you want to exercise that control. This Paper is Only About Copyright Your 3D object might be protected by more than copyright. It could be protected by patent, or by trademark.

So why is this paper only about copyright?

Mostly because copyright protection is free. If you create something that is eligible for copyright protection, it automatically gets copyright protection free of charge. There are good reasons to register your copyright, but registration is not required for protection. This means that you get a copyright without ever filling out paperwork, consulting a lawyer, or even wanting it in the first place

This White Paper was published by Public Knowledge on March 06, 2015: Public Knowledge is a non-profit Washington, D.C.-based public interest group that is involved in intellectual property law, competition, and choice in the digital marketplace, and an open standards/end-to-end internet.

Only issue that needs further clarification is how 3d printing copyright works in international environment. You create a 3d object in one country, publish it on a repository in second county, someone in third country downloads it and does something against your licence...

THE BATTLE OF COPYRIGHT
Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:THE_BATTLE_OF_COPYRIGHT.jpg

Mar 22, 2015

Redditor wildpanic posted his build log on /r/3dprinting about his making of fully functional 3d printed mechanical keyboard.
It is printed from two parts due to print surface limitations but the end result looks great!

If you own an early version of wooden Printrbot Simple from 2013 / 2014 that is powered by Kevlar fishing line you may want to upgrade it to belt drive.
Jason Bowling made a very detailed guide on the entire process that will upgrade you small Printrbot. Kudos Jason!

Here is a short video showing the process of fitting a nut and threaded rod into a 3d printed part that doesn't fit. Basically the nut is heated and melted into the part.
The is no problem that can not be solved by applying some force to it :-)

Mar 20, 2015

There are more and more home manufacturing tools and TwinTeeth is one of the more developed I saw.
It is a multitool reversed Delta machine mainly orientated towards PCB manufacturing but it can serve as 3d printer also. It is fully open sourced with plans so you can easily build it yourself or customize it to your needs. True ability for distributed manufacturing.

It has following functions and exchangeable tool options:

UV Laser photoengraving on sensitive film or pre-sensitized boards using an ultraviolet laser.

Drilling vias and holes using any mini-rotary tool like Dremel® or Proxxon®.

Milling/Carving soft materials or etching PCB copper with a v-bit (if you prefer this etching method).

TwinTeet core inverse Delta and replaceable toolheads in front of it

Here is a video of it in action:

TwinTeeth technical specifications from the project page:

Working area (X,Y,Z): 70x80x60mm reduced considerably to an “Arduino™ shield-size” because it's preferred to do something small but precise. Users rarely create big circuit boards and reducing the working area has some benefits: the robot is cheaper, more precise, more robust, smaller and more manageable. However, it’s scalable, so you can make it bigger if you want.

Motion: TwinTeeth is powered by three Nema 17 motors, lead-screws and anti-backlash nuts.

Speed: it can go as fast as 1200-1500mm/min.

Code: it supports G-Code, postscript and BMP files. Eagle CadSoft can export to postscript format very easily. Support BMP files means than in addition to PCBs it can also print and etch photos on copper, alu or bronze.

Laser: using the same PHR-803T optical pickup than DiyouPCB with a wavelength of 405nm.

Rastering: the robot draws the PCB circuits in rastering mode in a similar way any paper printer does: moving the laser (or the bed in our case) from one side of the printer to the other.

Auto bed-levelling – it keeps the bed flat with a tolerance of less than 0.01mm while the robot is moving. It’s very important to improve printing quality and provide precision.

Auto-Focus: - small focus differences on the PCB surface affect printing quality so implemented a robust focusing system which takes some points on the PCB and extrapolates the results with a bilinear equation. With that info the robot adjusts the focus automatically while printing.

Infrared focusing: the auto-focus system uses an infrared laser to avoid film blurring. Films or presensitized boards are only sensible to ultraviolet light.

Electronics – using the well known combination of Arduino™ Mega + RAMPS 1.4 + A4988 Motor Drivers. Improved the Pickup Driver Circuit developed for DiyouPCB and now it includes new features.

Precision fixture bed – it is very important to keep the PCB fixed to the bed while the robot is moving. Also, when printing two-sided PCBs you have to be sure that both sides are correctly aligned. TwinTeeth includes a precision aluminium fixture bed and dowel pins which allow correct fixing and positioning of the PCBs. A stencil is also included which helps to drill the PCB’s 4-positions holes.

Camera – included a small USB camera because it is difficult to see tiny details on high-density PCBs. The camera is also useful to set the home position which is very important to obtain accuracy.

3D Printing: FFF (Fused Filament Fabrication) with 1.75mm PLA/ABS and a 0.35mm extrusion nozzle. Printing quality is similar to any 3D printer you can find in the market.

TwinTeeth software:

TwinTeeth Firmware: deeply modified Marlin firmware to support multiple tools, manage and control the laser, implement the auto-focus system, print in rastering mode, improve the buffering, and much more.

TwinTeeth Management Console – TwinTeeth comes with a new easy-to-use management console which includes functionality specially designed for the multi-tool environment. Included functions to calibrate the printer, move the axis (jogging), and adjust the parameters of each tool. This software communicates with the robot through an USB 2.0 port.

TwinTeeth Eagle ULPs – developed some ULPs (Eagles’s user language programs) to generate the drilling and paste dispensing g-code files. You can also use the files generated by other ULPs like PCBCode.

Eagle Cadsoft – It is a popular electronic CAD software company. They provide a freeware version for non-commercial use. It easily generates the postscript, drilling and solder paste dispensing files which TwinTeeth uses to make the circuits.

3D Slicing software– for 3D printing you can use any slicer software like Slic3R or Cura.

This is probably the cheapest DLP SLA 3D printer that you can build yourself for some 500 USD including the projector!

"Little Dipper" has a simple design that anyone can replicate with some basic DIY skills and it makes prints with reasonable quality.
The most expenisve par is the projector which you can get dfor some 350 USd new, but you could probably get it used somewhere. Other parts include simple z axis movement (screw or belt driven) on wood frame and Ramps 1.4 or Arduino controlled electronics.

Simple plastic vat and z axis screw drive

Objects 3d printed on Little Dipper

Objects 3d printed on Little Dipper. You can see the layers, but the quality is still great for the price.

Objects 3d printed on Little Dipper

Little Dipper DIY DLP Sla 3d printer. You can see all the elements with DLP projector on top.

Here is the project description from the makers:

How it works?
A DLP projector is used to cure UV setting resin one layer at a time while a moving axis drops incrementally into the vat of resin. A projected slice cures each layer and builds the part. This style of resin printer is different from a FormLabs 3D printer and some others in two ways.

It uses a DLP projector rather than a laser to cure each layer.

It shines the light source from the top rather than up from the bottom.

Advantages over laser based bottom up and DLP bottom up designs:

Simplicity

Lower start-up cost

Modifiable to bottom up

Fast build (~1 evening)

Major Components and Materials:

DLP projector
There are 2 known choices, although others may work.

Acer P1283 DLP Projector

Acer H6510BD DLP HD projector

Linear Slide/Axis

Almost any linear axis that is belt driven or screw driven will work. Project uses a minimal version of this:http://www.openbuilds.com/builds/v-slot-lead-screw...
A more budget minded and adventurous person could even choose a drawer slide, but you may find that rigidity and smooth sliding in the z-axis will be a useful feature.

4x4 sheet of 1/2in MDF or equivalent material and hardware

The version shown here is as simple as it gets. 2 pices of MDF cut to provide a mount for the axis, projector and stable footing for the machine. Pretty much any kind of enclosure can be designed for this 3D printer. Your main objective is frame rigidity and ambient light blocking.

This build features a RAMPS 1.4 board, stepper drivers and an Arduino Mega 2650 with standard Sprinter firmware. There are some basic modifications needed depending on the hardware you choose. None of these modifications constitute needing to know anything in-depth about programming. The firmware used is modified for 5/16 standard threaded rod and has end-stops disabled. You can modify this firmware using the Arduino environment to further suit your needs.

UV Resin

Makerjuice.com, Madesolid.com are the two most seemingly popular and affordable options for UV resin suitable for DIY resin printers such as the one featured in this build. This build has been tested with G+ from Makerjuice. Funtodoo, Form1+ and Spark/Ember resin formulations are likely suitable.

Build Platform and Plastic Tupperware vat

This build includes plans for a build platform that fits a specific set of Tupperware available at "wallyworld". The benefit to the type chosen in this build is that you get a variety of sizes that scale easily, so that extensive design modifications are not needed. You will also need additional containers for post-cure/clean up of your resin parts.

All the recent developments in SLA 3d printing make me think that it is the future for home and hobby 3d printing. We need more affordable resin materials and more low cost parts.

UPDATE:

Thanks to Reddit commentator "Panaetius" here is a link where you can start to research on how to hack or prepare a DLP projector for using it for SLA 3d printing. It describes basic concepts and example of modifications to color wheel focus / lens mechanism and UV filters.

Mar 17, 2015

Standard extruders are heated by simple resistive heaters and you basically need to push enough 12 or 24 V DC electric current through a resistor and simple MOSFET.

Induction heated extruders would have many advantages over them: faster heating up, no high temperature insulation is needed and less thermal mass. All of this could make induction heaters light and fast.
The main disadvantage is the more complex electric circuits needed to power it and more complex control unit since it is using much higher voltage and hundreds of kHz AC.

Slow convergence to desired steady state temperature at extruder tip, (many seconds, up to several minutes) and

slow feedback loop for temperature control, (from 100's of ms to s)

Lack of fine-grain temperature control at extruder tip, in steady state, the entire metal nozzle is essentially soaked too, or near, the melting temperature.

Inconsistent feeder response due to varying liquid plastic volume near tip and

limits on filament and extruded plastic drop size

The extruder tip with inductive heating coil would be physically similar in appearance, but would have several distinct differences:

Rather than a metal nozzle, it would be made of a thermally insulating, nonconductive material such as glass or boron nitride.

The actual heated element would be buried inside the tip to make direct contact with the plastic

The power for heating is transferred through electromagnetic coupling of a driving coil to the heated element. The heated element, (and the molten plastic around it), are thermally isolated from the rest of the extruder.

By using inductive heating and passive, digital temperature sensing of the heating target at the nozzle tip, significant improvements can be made to the issues above, resulting in a faster production of more isotropic/mechanically stronger plastic prototypes. Also, the above problems typically put a limit on usable filament size, something this system should be able to surpass.

As someone noticed in the comments, it would be interesting to see the induction extuder based on filament with metal particles where induction heats the filament itself. Then you could reduce the mass even further.

Another thing to mention is a possibility that the induction coil will interfere with nearby electronics and maybe emit noisy radio waves. It could also interact with build platform or other parts causing heating or melting damage.

If you want to build a serious desktop induction heater for the metal melting of larger pieces here is a link:

Mar 16, 2015

Amazon wants to patent 3d printing in the delivery vans. You order something and they print it in the delivery van driving towards you. It's probably a move in some grand corporate strategy of taking over the world, defensive patenting or preventative patenting. I will not even try to forecast implications of this ...

3D Hubs, a local 3D printing service now accepts payments in bitcoin! This is a major step forward to truly decentralized manufacturing economy!

From their press release:

Amsterdam, March 9, 2015

Bitcoin gets physical with 3D Hubs

Bitcoin payment service provider BitPay, and 3D Hubs, the world’s largest network of 3D printers, have just announced a collaboration that will integrate bitcoin payments through Adyen into 3D Hubs’ network of over 13,000 privately owned 3D printers globally.

The partnership follows the recent news of Adyen’s integration of bitcoin. 3D Hubs, ​the Airbnb for 3D Printers, ​ is on a mission to make 3D printing accessible to everyone by connecting all the world’s 3D printers. The 3D Hubs model decentralizes production and promotes sustainability by eliminating the need for long­distance shipping. ​Today, the 3D Hubs network is providing over one billion people with access to a 3D printer within 10 miles of their home. 3D printing began in the early 80s as a form of rapid prototyping.

The original 3D printer, invented by Chuck Hull, involved using UV beams to solidify layers of liquid photopolymer in a vat. Since then, 3D printing has rapidly evolved, and 3D printers can now create products in a whole range of materials including plastics, resins, metals, ceramics, and even food. In fact, you can now create just about anything you can dream of.

Mar 13, 2015

YT user aonemarine made this video review of Machinable wax 3d printing filament made specially for lost wax casting. You print the object you want in wax, make a mold and melt the wax away to poor molten metal in it.
The lost PLA casting method is well known but it needs much higher temperatures to melt the PLA away. Wax is much easier to work with.
There have been some wax-like filaments and resins but there is still no wax filament solution that is well established. Maybe this will be the one.

Here is the video describing the wax:

Here is the video tutorial on how to cast metal with it (wax investment casting):

Massimo Moretti and his collaborators don’t forget their main focus: to build 3D printed houses with a very low cost, expecially in developing counties. Now here we are to the turning point: WASP exhibit for the first time at 3D Print Hub in Milan the new extruder, completely redesigned, a rotating extruder.

It is a small revolution. Advantages are several. This kind of system require little energy, it cleans by itself, it can be assembled and disassembled in a very few time, it has a costant speed control. These technical solutions can be transposed in a bigger scale. This is the reason because WASP team consider this transition as crucial in 12 meters tall 3D print building, which is in progress. WASP will give very soon more details about this new fronteer, which has been reached thanks to the constant research.

Here are the videos of extruder and Wasp large clay delta making house parts:

Here is a video of the extruder printing with long straw fibers to give more strength:

GuruBrew has published this excellent video tutorial on how to make your own automatic print bed leveling.
It looks easy and it will help you with your calibration and improve print quality. It takes a normally closed micro switch and a small RC servo, customized Marlin firmware and 3d printed probe mechanism.

YouMagine is a huge 3d model repository and 3d printing community and they have take a huge step by releasing their open source license: the 3DLP.
They have community to participate with their ideas and suggestion in finalizing the license, so go and do your duty netizen!

All subsequent derivatives of a shared file must be available for remix and sharing.

If the creator requires that you include reference to be printed on or in the physical printed object, such as a logo or name, you have to respect that and are not allowed to remove that reference without the creator’s approval.

If one doesn’t abide by the terms of the license the rights granted under the 3DPL will be terminated immediately.

If you fail to comply with the license such as selling a work that was meant to be non-commercial then you must pay the creator 3 times the gross revenue you made on the sale.

Arbitration for conflicts between parties is arranged for in accordance with the WIPO Expert Determination Rules.

Youmagine has 3 license types:

REMIX: With a REMIX license your derivative work must be available to remix and share by others.

REMIX — NON COM A REMIX — NON COM license restricts the use of the Design File, the modified Design File and any Designed Product to non-commercial use only. The Design File, the Modified Design File or any Designed Product may not be used with the intent of making money directly or indirectly from it.

REMIX — RIGHTS MELT REMIX — NON COM for 12 months melting down to REMIX after 12 months. With a REMIX — RIGHTS MELT license your design file is available as a non-commercial share-alike file for 12 months. After this period the license will automatically become REMIX.

Learn more on Youmagine blog where you can also get involved in community development process:

We have an open approach, and encourage the use of 3rd-party materials in our printer. We include 3rd-party materials in the defaults for Ember's online model preparation and slicer, and are adding more as we optimize their settings for Ember: you can check them out at emberprinter.com. (You don't actually need an Ember to use the site.) This Instructable describes how to test new resins:

Autodesk is thinking differently about 3D printing, and sharing under an license reflects our commitment.

Open sourcing our resin formulation is only the first step in the journey of opening our 3D printer and our Spark 3D printing platform.

Mar 8, 2015

Sardauscan is probably the cheapest 3d scanner in the world and there is very little space to reduce the price.
You can build this 3d scanner for under 30 USD. It is controlled by cheap Chinese copy of Arduino Nano and you only need two USB ports on your computer to power it. The most expensive part is a Hercules HD Twist webcam.
The Sardauscan is developed by Fabio Ferretti from Belgium and it is open sourced! Great work Fabio!

All the files needed to build it yourself with some instructionscan be found at:

We could see very soon home based robotic mini factories where robots, cnc machines, pick-and-place machines and 3d printers make anything you can imagine.

If you want to develop your own project you can use this robotic hand developed at Yale.

It comes in several configurations with different number of fingers. Finger grippers are made from different combinations of flexible and hard materials moved by fiber tendons. The resulting movements show that it can manipulate many different types of objects.
OpenHand is an open source projects so all the files are available publicly even including a code to modify the design.

OpenHand in three finger configuration

Here are some videos of different OpenHand versions manipulating objects:

In this video they show Hybrid Deposition Manufacturing (HDM) production process of OpenHand components where different materials are used to create object with functional properties. The process is easily replicated at home workshop:

Mini Metal Maker is a small metal clay 3d printer developed by David and Lindsay Hartkop. It extrudes special metal clay which is then air dried and fired in a kiln to get metal objects. Ideal for jewelry makers and other small fine metal specialists.
The first version of Mini Metal Maker had a very successful Indiegogo campaign in 2013. Now the new version if fully matured and is on Indiegogo again to move the production of the machines from their home to real factory..
They have developed it from a wooden proof-of-concept to a sturdy production-ready machine ready for this specific metal clay 3d printing market.

Technical specifications:

the print bed currently allows for prints up to a 3.15 in cube (8 x 8 x 8 cm)

XY resolution: 10 microns

Z resolution: 2 microns

Extrusion resolution: 250 micron traces with 22 ga. nozzle

The device prints with a commercially available jewelry product known as "metal clay." This material is a pre-mixed emulsion of metal particles in a water soluble organic binder. When heated to 1550˚F(600˚C-900˚C) in a kiln, the binder burns away as the metal particles fuse together.

Mar 3, 2015

It's hard being Cody Wilson. With all the controversy and media attention, FedEx declines to ship his legal Ghost Gunner CNC and now MarkForge refuses to sell him Mark One carbon fiber 3d printer.
Why?
Because they know he will 3d print a gun with it. Which is as far as many sources claim also legal in the USA as long is it made from metal and not sold.
So what did Cody do? He put a 15000 USD bounty on Mark One machine.

You can think whatever you want about Cody Wilson but he certainly knows how to use the media. Things are getting interesting in 3d printing :-)
We will probably see first carbon fiber 3d printed gun very soon...

ExtrusionBot has new flagship filament extruder model: the EB2. It features high extrusion speeds at 6,5 feet per minute and modules that can be attached to it like cruncher that will shred 3d printed objects for recycling into new filament and spool winder.

Technical specifications:

automated touchscreen user interface

expanded materials (Nylon, HDPE, LDPE, HIPS, PET, plus ABS and PLA)

filament cooling mechanism

universal power adapter

embedded pellet hopper

2 USB ports for smart module attachment

Price: 899 USD

Spooler module will ensure that the extruded filament is properly coiled up

Cruncher module will crunch your failed or unwanted 3d printed objects and make new filament from them

You are a huge fan of Kerbal Space Program? You already made your 3d printed Kerbal controller? You want to 3d print your ship? No problem! Just upload your .craft file and Eucl3d will do the rest ...
I don't know what is the price but it looks cool!